Cheese and Charcuterie · Arcata, California
Cypress Grove Creamery
Humboldt County goat cheese pioneer and the home of Humboldt Fog.
- Founded
- 1983
- Founded by
- Mary Keehn
- Based in
- Arcata, California
Making it since
1983
Their story
Cypress Grove began with Mary Keehn, a single mother of four in Humboldt County who took in two goats from a neighbor in the 1970s, part of the back-to-the-land wave. She started making cheese for her family, and in 1983 a $10,000 family loan turned it into a business in Arcata.
The cheese that put the creamery on the map, Humboldt Fog, came to Keehn in a dream after a trip to France: a soft-ripened goat cheese with a thin line of ash through the middle. It helped prove that American goat cheese could stand next to the French classics.
In 2010 Keehn sold Cypress Grove to the Swiss dairy company Emmi. She has since retired, and the creamery continues in Arcata.
How it's made
For years Cypress Grove bought goat milk from outside farms, then in 2010 it started its own dairy, which now supplies more than half its milk from a Certified Humane herd. For Humboldt Fog, the team pre-drains the curds before molding them rather than ladling them in, then lets the cheese ripen.
My start was serendipic and an offshoot of the land movement of the 60s and 70s.
Why we carry them
Humboldt Fog is one of the cheeses we reach for when building a board for someone new to goat cheese, bright and creamy with a gentle tang.
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